Research

Welcome to my research page.

In my current research, I focus on questions on equity and fairness arising from the international negations on climate change.

My work stems from my interest in the conditions of justice in diverse and pluralistic environments. I have long been interested in the role of the institutional architecture in fostering cooperation guided by overriding values of freedom and equality.

I am also interested in rationality and decision theory. More specifically, I am interested in the challenges of group choices and the different theoretical perspectives that have been developed.

Thinking about these issues forces us to reflect on methodological questions on how the big questions of justice and equity should be approached. I have long been a defender of the view that political philosophy, to be cogent, should be consistent with empiricism as well as with the best science that is available. I consider myself to be a student of non-foundationalist approaches to moral and political thought. I am motivated by efforts to move away, as much as possible, from lofty metaphysical constructs.

I am indebted in my thinking to John Rawls, as well as many thinkers in the empiricist tradition, including Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, John Stuart Mill. Among thinkers who inspire me are also some of the 20th Century empiricists, such as Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Moritz Schlick, Hans Reichenbach. I firmly hold, as many of these thinkers did, that philosophical inquiry must move forward in tandem with the latest and best available science.

Scholarly journal publications:

Boran, I. 2016. "Principles of Public Reason in the UNFCCC: Rethinking the Equity Framework", forthcoming in Science and Engineering Ethics.